Creating for a cause

By Caitlin Ware, Staff Writer cware@amestrib.com

Wednesday

May 9, 2018 at 7:15 AMMay 9, 2018 at 9:54 PM

A group of Ames High School students has spent the last several weeks working to create more than a dozen one-of-a-kind portraits for children in need through participating for the first time in nonprofit organization The Memory Project.

The project — which invites art teachers and students to craft and donate portraits to children in need around the world —got started at Ames High School after art teacher Lindsay Wede heard that Ballard High School had participated in the program over the last two years, and wanted to try it in Ames. Offered through the high school’s Art Club, AHS students had the option to join the volunteer effort to provide children in Poland who have faced struggles through violence, disasters, extreme poverty, neglect, or the loss of parents with a piece of original artwork all their own.

“I try in my classes to make sure everything feels meaningful to (students),” Wede said. “But I would say this is exceptionally meaningful, because they’re doing work and they’re putting time and effort into this piece that they don’t get to keep. It’s a true service. It’s really educational to know you can do something with art that benefits somebody else.”

Work on The Memory Project at AHS officially got rolling in February, starting with students receiving photos of the children. Although the children in the project are always left anonymous, information such as their first names, ages, what country they are from and their favorite color is shared with the artists to help inspire their work.

From there, participating students were able to spend about a month and a half sketching, experimenting with different ideas and putting their own creative spin on their assigned subjects using mixed media, from paint to colored pencils and watercolors.

In total, 16 students signed up to participate in the project, which AHS senior Polyphony Bruna, who is coordinating the effort, said was a sizable number, considering participation requires a $15 fee per portrait submission to contribute to the costs of coordination and delivery.

“In that initial search for students, there’s a $15 fee to do the project, so for high school students I predicted that might be a turn-off,” Bruna said, adding that as an alternate option, a local version of the project was proposed to eliminate the fee. “And overwhelmingly all the responses I got back was that they wanted to do the real project and spend the money. It showed they understood the significance of the project itself, and the impact it would have, which was really cool.”

For AHS junior Courtney Thompson, who put together a portrait for an 8-year-old girl named Weronika (pronounced Veronica), getting involved with the project was appealing as a way to have an impact through art. She said that in total, she spent around 15 hours on her portrait, and had four or five almost finished versions along the way, but kept restarting because she wanted to make it the best finished product she could.

“I grew up kind of underprivileged, so I can see where a lot of the need for it was, the impact that it was going to have on the underprivileged kids who grew up in poverty or came from bad family situation,” Thompson said. “I thought it would be a good chance to make an impact with my art … a good way to make an impact on some children’s lives.”

All 16 portraits were completed at the end of April and can now be found on display at the Ames Public Library, where they will be located until May 15. Each of the portraits was sent off with an accompanying message for the children written in Polish, and a photo of the student artist behind the work.

Later on, the students involved will receive a video of the children receiving their portraits.

According to Wede, based off of the success of its inaugural year, she hopes to introduce The Memory Project as an annual fixture at AHS.

“I thought it was a good challenge for a good cause,” AHS sophomore Abby Tibben said of her decision to get involved with the project. “I think it really helped me realize what I’m capable of, and it really challenged me to do better. I learned a lot from it.”

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